Ancestors And Other Visitors

Pursued through poetic pastures of faith, love, and time by an Omuhimba muse who alternately challenges and enchants him, D. Stevenson presents Ancestors and Other Visitors, a poetry anthology that is as sweepingly existential as it is personal and as sagely simple as it is complex. An immigrant, artist and spoken wordsmith observing the world through a traveler soul, Stevenson journeys through time and literary style to pay homage to influence such as e.e. cummings, W.B. Yeats and Robert Hayden in a wonderfully intimate selection of poems. Set primarily in Windhoek, Namibia, Stevenson’s home of 37 years, Ancestors is at once a musing on self, surroundings and the local artists who inflame his imagination: a young Namibian painter, a dance troupe that inspired ‘Arc magnificent’ and ‘Unseen’, with original ballet, and the assorted upcoming poets who fees his passion and whose stage he shares. Offering up exposition as well as desperate, imagined and curious conversations. Ancestors is a welcome and unprecedented addition to the Namibian poetry landscape.

Pursued through poetic pastures of faith, love, and time by an Omuhimba muse who alternately challenges and enchants him, D. Stevenson presents Ancestors and Other Visitors, a poetry anthology that is as sweepingly existential as it is personal and as sagely simple as it is complex. An immigrant, artist and spoken wordsmith observing the world through a traveler soul, Stevenson journeys through time and literary style to pay homage to influence such as e.e. cummings, W.B. Yeats and Robert Hayden in a wonderfully intimate selection of poems. Set primarily in Windhoek, Namibia, Stevenson’s home of 37 years, Ancestors is at once a musing on self, surroundings and the local artists who inflame his imagination: a young Namibian painter, a dance troupe that inspired ‘Arc magnificent’ and ‘Unseen’, with original ballet, and the assorted upcoming poets who fees his passion and whose stage he shares. Offering up exposition as well as desperate, imagined and curious conversations. Ancestors is a welcome and unprecedented addition to the Namibian poetry landscape.

In 2010, five magnificent Blackfoot shirts, now owned by the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, were brought to Alberta to be exhibited at the Glenbow Museum, in Calgary, and the Galt Museum, in Lethbridge. The shirts had not returned to Blackfoot territory since 1841, when officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company acquired them. The shirts were later transported to England, where they had remained ever since. Exhibiting the shirts at the museums was, however, only one part of the project undertaken by Laura Peers and Alison Brown. Prior to the installation of the exhibits, groups of Blackfoot people—hundreds altogether—participated in special “handling sessions,” in which they were able to touch the shirts and examine them up close. The shirts, some painted with mineral pigments and adorned with porcupine quillwork, others decorated with locks of human and horse hair, took the breath away of those who saw, smelled, and touched them. Long-dormant memories were awakened, and many of the participants described a powerful sense of connection and familiarity with the shirts, which still house the spirit of the ancestors who wore them. In the pages of this beautifully illustrated volume is the story of an effort to build a bridge between museums and source communities, in hopes of establishing stronger, more sustaining relationships between the two and spurring change in prevailing museum policies. Negotiating the tension between a museum’s institutional protocol and Blackfoot cultural protocol was challenging, but the experience described both by the authors and by Blackfoot contributors to the volume was transformative. Museums seek to preserve objects for posterity. This volume demonstrates that the emotional and spiritual power of objects does not vanish with the death of those who created them. For Blackfoot people today, these shirts are a living presence, one that evokes a sense of continuity and inspires pride in Blackfoot cultural heritage.

Ancestors and Others collects selected stories from the legendary southern writer, Fred Chappell In this collection, Fred Chappell shows his mastery across a range of genres. Featuring folk fables in the Twain tradition, realistic stories of growing up in remote Appalachia, stories of family, kin, and community, and tales of the fantastic and spooky, this book will delight fans and surprise new readers.

“Extraordinary and wide-ranging . . . a literary feat that simultaneously builds and excavates identity.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club Pick • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize • An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her complicated Southern family—and finds that our obsession with ancestors opens up new ways of seeing ourselves—in this “brilliant mix of personal memoir and cultural observation” (The Boston Globe). ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Esquire, Garden & Gun Maud Newton’s ancestors have fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother’s father was said to have married thirteen times. Her mother’s grandfather killed a man with a hay hook. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated Maud’s maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Newton’s family inspired in her a desire to understand family patterns: what we are destined to replicate and what we can leave behind. She set out to research her genealogy—her grandfather’s marriages, the accused witch, her ancestors’ roles in slavery and other harms. Her journey took her into the realms of genetics, epigenetics, and debates over intergenerational trauma. She mulled over modernity’s dismissal of ancestors along with psychoanalytic and spiritual traditions that center them. Searching and inspiring, Ancestor Trouble is one writer’s attempt to use genealogy—a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry—to make peace with the secrets and contradictions of her family's past and face its reverberations in the present, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us.

Rethinking Evolution in the Museum explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. In particular, the book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and powerful images museum visitors bring with them to the museum. In doing so, the book illustrates how the preconceived images held by museum audiences about anthropology, Africa, and the museum itself strongly impact the human origins exhibition experience. Although museological theory has come increasingly to recognize that museum audiences ‘make meaning’ in exhibitions, or make their own complex interpretations of museum exhibitions, few scholars have explicitly asked how. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum, however, provides a rare window into visitor perceptions at four world-class museums—the Natural History Museum and Horniman Museum in London, the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Through rigorous and novel mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) covering nearly 500 museum visitors, this innovative study shows that audiences of human origins exhibitions interpret evolution exhibitions through a profoundly complex convergence of personal, political, intellectual, emotional and cultural interpretive strategies. This book also reveals that natural history museum visitors often respond to museum exhibitions similarly because they use common cultural tools picked up from globalized popular media circulating outside of the museum. One tool of particular interest is the notion that human evolution has proceeded linearly from a bestial African prehistory to a civilized European present. Despite critical growths in anthropological science and museum displays, the outdated Victorian progress motif lingers persistently in popular media and the popular imagination. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum sheds light on our relationship with natural history museums and will be crucial to those people interested in understanding the connection between the visitor, the museum and media culture outside of the museum context.

Discover the Spiritual Nourishment and Magical Power of Ancestor Veneration Learn how to connect to your ancestors and receive the benefits that come from veneration—deeper spirituality, more love in your life, better outcomes in creative pursuits, powerful magic and spellwork, and an improved sense of wellness. Filled with hands-on techniques and tips, Honoring Your Ancestors shows you how to create an ancestor altar so you can work with ancestors of all kinds. Author Mallorie Vaudoise also shares fascinating ideas for incorporating rituals, spells, family recipes, and even practices like music and dancing to help you open this wonderful new dimension of your spiritual journey. Ancestor veneration is one of the most widespread spiritual practices in the world. This book shares the important distinctions between working with blood ancestors, lineage ancestors, and affinity ancestors while helping you recognize the signs that your ancestors are responding to your petitions and offerings. You will also explore important topics like mediumship and ancestral trauma so you can be sure to develop a veneration practice that's uplifting and affirming for you.

Frank Ching brings to life 900 years of Chinese history through his own fascinating family tree. Beginning with his search for the grave of his first recorded ancestor, the 11th century poet Qin Guan, and ending with a moving account of his relationship with his father, a victim of China's historic upheaval, Frank Ching introduces a colourful cast of characters. His unbroken family line includes - among many others - a lovelorn concubine, a traitor, a military hero, an imperial ghost-writer, a minister of punishments and a woman noted for her skills in both verse and martial arts. There is scarcely an aspect of Chinese life, from shamanism to violent rebellion, that Ching doesn't touch upon in this fascinating work. Through his vivid and personal portraits of his ancestors the history of China itself unfolds: from the days of the ancient empire to its radical transformation today.